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If there was one thing you could say for certain about Umbrella, regardless of all its gossip, secrets, and never-ending public controversy, it was that it was big.
It wasn’t just big, it was absolutely enormous– one of the closest things to a metal ocean that Zeno had ever laid eyes on. Wherever he looked, he was met with white, non-porous walls, linoleum floors, pale light, and cardkey-activated doors, certain to lead to even more expansive hallways and rooms, everything just another tiny branch in the endless, ever-growing web of Umbrella.
“Allow me to show you our latest project.” The man in front of him, a middle-aged virologist leading him through the vast facility, ventured, “I’m sure you’ll be pleased.”
Zeno hummed in acknowledgement and followed wordlessly through a montage of high-security doors, each one heavier than the last.
It seemed that as they went deeper into the building, they got closer and closer to the true brunt of what Zeno was looking for. Rawness. Yes, he knew that he, as one of the corporation’s most important and closely intertwined investors, should know exactly how deep and dark these operations got, but it wasn’t just that.
He wanted to see it, the subjects strapped to tables, the dogs suspended in test tube fluid, the billions of pale, sprawling bacterium nurtured to vitality inside petri dishes– it was all so wonderful. Showed him that the things he did and all the thousands he contributed actually worked— made him feel like a big man, he supposed. He smirked faintly. What a stupid term.
Admittedly, Zeno didn’t know much past the first thing about biology, nor did he really care about all the technical information. It was just a stupid, guilty pleasure, he presumed. Everyone has at least one.
“So…doctor…” He began slowly, voice cold and calm, “What are we working on now?”
The other man pushed open another gateway to reveal an utterly enormous loft stretching in all directions. Had the telltale whir of industrial-sized fans high above not informed him, he could’ve believed there was no roof– simply an inky darkness reaching endlessly into the night, and Zeno stared in something like awe before he caught and collected himself.
The scientist tched.
“Same as we’ve always been, my friend, although I must admit that it’s getting…difficult.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, as I’m sure you know, we don’t actually have Miss Ashcroft with us– if we did, we wouldn’t be wasting so much time with the children.” He waved one gloved hand dismissively. “We make more as we see fit, naturally, but, unfortunately, as I'm sure you know, the more you clone a piece of DNA, the more it deteriorates.”
Zeno’s brow quirked in surprise. Perhaps he wasn’t actually as well-versed in biology as he’d thought.
“We need more subjects.” The man paused, then sighed upon catching Zeno’s annoyed expression. “I know. It’s always ‘more, more, more,’ with us, hm? Don’t worry about it. Doctor Gideon said he could find a couple more, easily, but there are still funds that go into acclimating and actually, you know, working with them.”
“So…?”
The doctor led him around a corner to reveal rows and rows of oversized test tubes, each one containing a curled, flesh-colored mass.
“We need another twenty-thousand.”
Fuck.
Even if that was by no means enough to completely sink Zeno into your average, day-to-day wealth, or dare he say, middle class, it would still sting his wallet for at least the coming month.
“Are you completely certain this is the last time?”
“I’m sorry, sir, you can watch all the research and whatnot if you like– although most of it is just documents and plasmid work, but I can’t promise that.”
Zeno sighed in exasperation, casting a hooded glance around the intensely air-conditioned facility. There must’ve been at least ten-thousand specimens arranged in neat, uniform lines around him, creating hallways upon hallways of pink, embryonic organisms floating in tightly-regulated fluids. An ocean of blue in the edges of his vision told him they stretch onto the walls, too.
Some sported enormous, yet still tightly closed eyes, like those of a newborn, some had underdeveloped limbs, some had one too many– an ongoing list of differences and distinctions in each one that Zeno could've spent hours assessing.
And every single one was a failure.
God, he needed to find a more secure investment. Perhaps the chemical business had things more straightened out.
He turned to the doctor to ask him something about one of the subject's oddly translucent skin, but froze.
Nothing.
The other man had completely disappeared from his sight, leaving nothing but a vast, white-light illuminated cavity where Zeno’s brain so desperately demanded there be a person.
“...Doctor?” He called softly. He couldn’t even remember footsteps leading away.
His eyes frantically searched every nook and cranny of the facility, even ghosting over the blank, soulless expressions of some of the subjects in vain attempts to find something, anything to latch on to.
He stumbled forward a couple of steps. Wait.
Zeno whirled to face one of the rigid, uniform test tubes.
The…thing inside, the person, he supposed, or more so the creature that resembled a person. It looked like him.
A deep, cold feeling of dread burst inside him and began to drip, drip, drip throughout his entire body.
It wasn’t like he had a mirror to compare it, but even then, through the electric blue tint of the thick fluid encasing it, Zeno could’ve sworn the organism’s short blonde hair matched his to a tee. It didn’t make sense. Why in the world would a random subject, something being used for its genetic potential, not its physical appearance, have the same haircut as Zeno? They shouldn't have had a haircut at all— either completely bald or growing completely untouched. The style didn't make any sense.
The closest thing he'd ever seen that compared to this biological library of Alexandria had been a small, heavily incubated, refridgerator-like cube containing roughly thirteen underdeveloped human specimens, all of which had been pale and completely hairless.
Even wild-caught subjects quickly lost their sense of identity, being shaved and quickly tattooed the number Umbrella had designated them as. A lab-grown beast shouldn't have known even the mere concept.
Unnerved, Zeno fell back from the tank and continued down the now seemingly endless alleyway, tripping over himself in ways he hadn’t done so since he was just a child.
It took him what must’ve been twenty minutes just to get to the end of the line, only to turn and see…another hallway. The overarching side of what looked to be hundreds of additional, branched-off hallways, each one containing thousands of those same, aquamarine, fluid-filled test tubes lined up in perfect formation.
Zeno paused for a moment to catch his breath, something he never had to do, at least not after what should have been such a relatively short run for him, and subconsciously turned to the tank beside him.
Smooth, ivory skin, yet untouched by whatever horrors Umbrella had planned for it.
A straight nose protruding from sharp cheeks, perfect to the exact angle.
Large, round eyes, tightly shut like a newborn, sealed by whatever chemicals and hormones the scientists had added to its tank.
Zeno wanted to vomit. It was him. It was perfectly, completely, undeniably him, with short, straight hair and a hard brow ridge, curled up like a fetus yet to be birthed and yet, already larger than the average fully grown man.
It was impossible– or, no, it wasn’t impossible. Nothing was impossible for Umbrella, but this- this-
It just didn’t make sense.
He was already here, right? So why make others? Why make thousands of others? There was no real logic to it; this was the type of thing they did to an unnamed specimen, the unimportant ones, the ones that serves merely as a sample of fresh flesh to be peered at by their superiors, and Zeno was anything but that, so- so unless…
Zeno swallowed the bile building in the back of his throat. He couldn’t be here.
Stumbling like a drunk man, Zeno darted down the hallway, bloodshot eyes desperately searching for a way out. There had to be an exit somewhere, right? This room had seemed so much smaller when he’d first entered, but now it stretched out endlessly, what felt like miles filled to the brim with cyan tubes and pale light, scorching Zeno like an ant under a magnifying glass.
He didn’t even notice the light brightening as he ran down the line of specimens, nor did he notice the various cracks and splinters forming in the thick, bulletproof glass containing them– it was impossible, his senses all hazily focused on escape and escape alone. Like a frightened, mindless, instinct-driven animal.
His expensive leather shoe landed in something wet and sticky, and Zeno looked down to see a small pool of blue fluid gathering around the black sole, seeping through it, his sock, and penetrating the vulnerable flesh inside like cobra venom.
His eyes flicked to the source on the spot, carrying all the speed of a feral, terrified beast, but even that was not quick enough.
The glass shattered in a single crisp, harsh crash and wave of something cool and thick washed over him, followed by a heavy, hard thump that landed squarely on his chest, knocking the breath clean out of his lungs.
Shaking, Zeno looked into a pale, sculpted disc of a face, eyes shut tight, mouth screwed into a straight line, lockjawed like a dead frog, hair slick and weighed down by the gallons of fluid that had suspending it in the tank.
It was Zeno.
Naked, uncalibrated with any of the horrors of reality, body smooth and completely untouched, a perfect canvas for whatever Umbrella had planned for it. Zeno yelped and shoved it (him?) off as hard as he could, though the cold, lifeless body was far heavier than he imagined. He tried to kick up and continue running, but his feet slipped in the pool surrounding and instead, Zeno crashed to the tiled floor again with a hard, loud clunk as his chin struck the tile hard.
Zeno struggled to get back up like a fish out of water, until the deafening crack of something else sounded and another heavy, cold object slammed on top of him, pinning him beneath what he could only assume were more of…of his bodies.
The thick, gel-like fluid splashed across Zeno, drenching his hair flat to his skull, covering his face, getting in his eyes and mouth where it stung like liquid fire, as if it’d had some acid component that was actively devouring the vulnerable tissues, and Zeno screamed like a dying man.
He didn’t stand a chance. He didn’t stand a chance, and nothing was even attacking him. He was going to die crushed and suffocated by his own lifeless clones, piling on top of him as an unmovable dead weight, contorting him, compressing him–
Through the haze and fluid blanketing his senses, Zeno heard another series of earsplitting crashes accompanied by more and more weight, and Zeno wailed for someone, anyone to help him, save him from his own helplessness and the inescapable gravity stamping him into the ground.
He tried desperately to forms words, but his tongue refused to conform to the shape, and his throat closed tightly shut, as if deep in the stages of rigor mortis, and nothing but a weak, animalistic keen escaped him.
This is it. This is it, you die like an insect, stuck in a slimy puddle and crushed by inanimate objects. You die like this, and Umbrella throws your body in the incerator with the rest of the trash, and there’s absolutely nothing—
Gaspppp!
Zeno shot up in bed.
In bed. In the duplex provided to him. Dry. Wearing nothing but his underwear and nightshirt, the only thing holding him down the delicate weight of his blankets.
Good God, he needed to get a grip.
Night terrors were an embarrassingly common occurrence for Zeno, something that’d run rampant in his mind when he was a boy, but had tapered off with age. They didn’t completely disappear, however. They never disappeared, and he’d been having problems with the senseless influx of them lately.
Zeno sighed, rubbing the side of his head. Perhaps he just needed a drink. That would put him down properly.
Zeno’s shoes clicked softly against the tile as he strode down the passageways to the infirmary.
He’d never really enjoyed visiting the Rhodes Care Center, but his “projects,” or whatever you wanted to label them, called for it, so he supposed he could put up with it.
Speaking of which, visiting Doctor Gideon was never a particularly enjoyable experience either, but once again, it seemed the Connections had a special talent for creating only the most incompatible duos.
He pushed through the heavy, ornate wooden doors to reveal a massive, open room filled to the brim with hospital beds. It seemed the center’s architecture hadn’t changed much since its days as an asylum in the 1950s, the bedframes still wiry metal and heating ducts exposed and attached to the otherwise relatively bare walls.
Various patients lay sprawled on the beds, all ranging in gender and age. It didn’t take Zeno long to single out the doctor. Of course it didn’t, it was like a giant slab of raw beef in a fruit cart. He towered over the bed he stood over like some kind of beastly bird of prey, his shoulders hunched and head tilted down enough to look the patient in the eyes.
Zeno strode over to him.
"Gideon—"
"Pleasure seeing you again so soon, Zeno," The older man murmured, not taking his attention off of the man in bed. Unwittingly, Zeno glanced at him. The…subject looked as if he could die in front of them on the spot. His skin had taken on a pale, waxy glow, not unlike beef tallow, his eyes half closed and seemingly staring at nothing (He was half certain they weren't looking in the same direction, either), and cracked, dry lips slightly open with breathes that would've been impossible for a normal human to pick up on. Zeno tched. Another one down the hatch, he supposed.
"I didn't realize you were coming."
"I got a call." He said simply, "He told me there was reason for us to meet, according to you…?"
Gideon tilted his head to the side thoughtfully, one hand resting on his patient's gangly shoulder.
"Oh. Yes. That. Don't worry about it, yet, Zeno, it's nothing drastically important."
Then why drag me to the heart of this hellhole if— nevermind. Zeno forced himself to take a breath. Forget about it. This primitive tendency for irritation didn't suit him.
"So you will talk to me…when?"
"In a moment, my friend," He chirped airly, "Just let me finish taking care of current matters. You're not a medical professional, but I'm sure even you are aware that you can't neglect these things."
Zeno hummed in acknowledgment, leading against the cool, hard walls. His gloved fingers instinctually itched to light up a cigarette, even if just for a single drag or two, but he resisted. God knew Gideon would kill him (that being, if he could) if he brought smoke around the patients.
Zeno scoffed to himself. The patients. Who gave them such importance? To date, only a single subject had survived the same parasite Umbrella had been injecting into them for the last two plus decades, and he doubted the next to earn that achievement was going to be any of the washed-out, sickly things hanging around the Rhodes facility. They all fell down the same route, suffered the same fate— some found themselves with new mutations, maybe a couple slightly powerful attributes, better capable at tearing apart anyone who came near them, but no one was really successful.
His fingers clenched into a fist.
No one but him.
Zeno watched, eyes burning in a distinct, animalistic anger and a feeling he couldn't place as the doctor ran a pair of huge, cracked hands up and down the sick man's body, checking his vitals, his teeth, his eyes, soft lips murmured something deep and quiet as he drew a small sample of blood from the other man's emaciated forearm.
It didn't take long for Gideon to complete his duties. There wasn't really much he could do for the poor bastard besides marking down his basic information and perhaps sparing a few kind words— God knew Gideon loved to spare kind words, much to Zeno's unexplainable annoyance. The older man slid away from the bed and towards him.
"It seems there's better results this week compared to the last," Gideon said thoughtfully. Despite being unable to meet them through the metal headpiece he'd never seen the man without, Zeno could feel his eyes bearing into him. "One or two have managed to handle it quite well. It's impressive, the poor things. It’s always rough on the body."
Zeno shrugged. There was very little he understood about all the experiments Victor ran here besides the basics; 'people will die here for Elpis,' however the hell that worked, but he'd never cared much. He was a businessman, not a biologist, despite his evidently biology-focused upbringing (if you could even call it that). Gideon took care of all the natural sciences that went into this project.
"Well…regardless, what'd you call me here for?" Zeno asked, absentmindedly playing with his silver cufflinks.
"Oh! That…" Gideon seemed to perk up. "Well, it was mainly the whole patient fiasco. Nothing too important, but I figured you would enjoy hearing that your money isn't simply going to waste over useless bodies."
Zeno sighed internally. He really would've preferred it if he'd been left alone in his duplex instead of standing in a repurposed nursing home with the sole purpose of watching Gideon tend to other people. It was ridiculous.
"How nice—"
"But I was also collecting a couple of tissue samples to send to the lab earlier and came across something particularly interesting." He paused, a faint smile on his lips. "I know you aren't scientifically inclined, Zeno, but I think it's of interest even to you."
The younger man raised one brow.
"Well?"
"Well, unfortunately, the results won't come in for at least another eight hours, so I can't give you anything comprehensive just yet, but there's a couple of things you can pick up from sight alone. Morphological characteristics. Things like that." He paused. "I haven't eaten since I began my work, Zeno." He ventured softly, and Zeno's eyes narrowed from behind his black sunglasses. "Why don't you accompany me to breakfast and I can tell you all about it? It's probably more comfortable than standing here, surrounded by sickness, anyways."
"I didn't bring food," Zeno said coldly. What the hell is up with you? He would've shot someone just to go home, and the older man's apparent insistence to spend time with him definitely wasn't helping. "Besides, I have things I must take care of, too. Why don't you send me an Email, doctor? Then perhaps you can include the lab results when they get back as well."
Gideon tilted his head.
"I don't mind sharing. I'm not a selfish man, and in any aspect, it's more enjoyable to explain my findings in person than over technology— my apologies, Zeno, but as I'm sure you can tell, I'm old-fashioned. Can you really blame me?"
Zeno sighed, checking the platinum watch wrapped around his wrist.
"I suppose not. But I can't stay any later than eleven."
"That's perfectly fine. Follow me."
Gideon's office was a shockingly un-creepy abode.
Zeno had been aggravated to learn that no, they were not actually going to the staff break room like he'd imagined, but the doctor's personal headquarters, where he presumably spent his time sipping red wine, fiddling with skeletal specimens, and completing spreadsheets (or something like that) on the various electronics sitting around.
Deep, rich wood carved into needlessly ornate patterns made up the walls, the ceiling high and coffered with yet more designs. Fleetingly, Zeno wondered about the logistics of that— since when were care centers so high-end? Whatever.
He wandered over to the huge leather couch where the larger man was seated, retrieving his breakfast and casting Zeno a sideways glance.
"You don't have any special dietary needs, do you, Zeno?" He asked, producing a container of poached eggs and smiling faintly. "You don't strike me as vegan, but it's always best to be certain."
"Of course not." Zeno scoffed. They made me in a fucking petri dish, his internal voice hissed, profoundly irritated, I think we both know I can handle some eggs and tree nuts.
Gideon shrugged, then patted the cushion next to him.
"Just checking."
Zeno sat on the other couch opposite him and Victor sighed to himself, nearly inaudible. "Well…anyway…it's been a while since I last ate. I'm sure it's the same for you, too, seeing how busy the Connections keep you—"
"What did you see with the sample?" Zeno interrupted him. He couldn't stand this place. It was too warm, like the inside of a goddamn greenhouse, pushing a certain dampness on to the back of his neck that didn't sit right with him, as Victor, for whatever reason, couldn't just tell him outright what had been so groundbreakingly important to drag him here at four in the morning, all the while his hightened senses were assaulted time and time again by the constant moaning and groaning of dying patients because, surprise, surprise, the doctor had been unsuccessful yet again. What a shocker.
The older man paused, his lips parted slightly in surprise. Wordlessly, he set his meal to the side and pulled off the metal headgear he seemingly wore every moment he worked.
Dear Lord.
It wasn't as if Zeno had never seen him like that; bared and exposed for his (and, in this situation, only his) observation, but the few times he'd caught a glance at Gideon's fully unobscured face had been increasingly rare as of late.
He had a surprisingly unmutated face, for how much the virus had grown and changed the rest of him. Besides a slew of seemingly superficial transformations, he still could've passed for a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, so long as he wore sunglasses and stayed in dark lighting.
Gideon stared at him curiously. That was the part that kept him from ever passing as still human, if you could somehow write off his size as him simply being an Andre the Giant type. His eyes were a shocking, intense red, bearing into Zeno, penetrating directly past any and all of the younger man's defenses, the whites completely overtaken by a deep burgundy stain, irises canary yellow, like some type of giant, inquisitive snake.
"…What's up with you, Zeno?" He murmured, voice soft and deep.
"I…" Zeno struggled to get it out. He shouldn't have, he really, really shouldn't have. It wasn't like he was speaking with his superior or someone vastly more important than him (even though Victor was such a huge man…). If anything, Zeno was the one with the power in their relationship!— without his funding, Victor would've been scrounging for scraps to keep up his projects, not relaxing in his needlessly oversized, overly-detailed personal office.
"You seem off."
"I need to go home."
The doctor frowned, smoothly standing up to his full height.
"That's not how you handle these things, my friend." He said, eyes trained on Zeno. The younger man refused to meet his gaze, but oddly enough, he didn't detect any anger in his tone despite the way Zeno had snapped at him. "I'm a doctor. Why take your troubles away from me?"
He wouldn't have noticed Gideon approaching him if not for the soft click, click of his boots against the same hardwood flooring Zeno found himself focusing so hard on.
"I—I don't—"
"I can fix it, Zeno, I promise." He paused, his smirk widening into an outward grin. "I'm good at these things."
The younger man breathed heavily.
"Is it possible you're overworked? God knows it's a struggle to keep all these things running."
"No—"
"Or perhaps you're simply bored? Have you ever heard of zoochosis?"
Zeno grunted, discomforted.
"It's a special sort of disease— not really a disease, I think, more of a syndrome. When keepers fail to keep animals properly entertained, they become aggressive, act strange, and do whatever they can to find solace." He sighed. "Tch. Such a shame, Zeno. There's all sorts of new studies coming out explaining how these things manifest in us men, too."
The younger man shivered. He was completely at a loss for words on what Gideon was talking about— just the senseless ramblings of a crazy bastard.
"Oh, I know."
Zeno twitched.
"You- you do?"
"Oh, yes. You're a lot worse at hiding yourself than you think, Zeno," He murmured, "I think everyone knows."
"…Then…?"
A smile split across his face.
"You're jealoussss, aren't you, sweetheart?"
Sweetheart. Like they were old lovers. In any other situation, he would've laughed.
"I am nothing of the sort—"
"Don't you lie to me, I could tell even if I weren't inoculated. You have to be better at your craft if you want to try that with me."
"I- I just…" Zeno trailed off.
A long, uncomfortable silence stretched out between them, Victor's burning, distinctly inhuman eyes never leaving his patron.
"…How about you call in for whatever you need to do later and tell them you can't make it." Gideon said quietly, delicately, his mouth trembling as if he were so incredibly excited at the prospect of…whatever he wanted to do. Was going to do.
Zeno had a few ideas.
He was close enough now that the younger man could smell him, even despite the constant hand-washing and sterilization it took to properly carry out his duties. Dark. Warm. A little smokey, although the doctor had told multiple times he stopped using cigarettes 'for integrity's sake, Zeno, because don't you think it makes me a hypocrite if I preach greens to my patients while I party and chainsmoke to my hearts content?'
He supposed some things just stick with you permanently.
"I…I can't, Gideon, I have- have…" He trailed off.
The obvious truth was that Zeno didn't really have to do anything today besides composing the same basic emails he did daily and perhaps some maintenance-level checkups on his local stockbrokers— nothing truly important on the agenda.
He looked up Victor, his cheeks burning and sunglasses one twitch away from slipping off his nose.
"….Okay."
"Almost. Put your—"
"I know."
"Hah…"
Zeno cursed to himself as he pulled his belt from the loops sewn into his pants, a mundane task that was proving to be ridiculously difficult.
Stupid. It'd never been difficult before, but then again, he'd never tried it in front of fucking Victor Gideon.
Or anyone, for that matter.
"Stop giggling at me. It's unprofessional, doctor."
Victor quieted, though the massive, shit-eating grin didn't leave his cheeks as he pulled Zeno a little closer, the younger man's still-clothed back brushing against his bare chest.
"I think it's safe to say we abandoned professionalism a long time ago."
Against his will, Zeno grunted softly as Victor pulled his belt away and tossed it to the side half-hazardly and ran one huge, cool hand down his side.
He'd long since discarded his overcoat, the expensive fabric splayed out on the enormous couch cushions like a cheap piece of garbage. Something meek and stupid inside him cried out about the humiliation of it all, but Zeno kept his mouth steeled shut.
"I take it you don't do these things too often."
"What gave it away?" He asked dryly. If he didn't have a wildly angry erection right now, he would've walked out in response to that question.
"Nothing much. Just your mannerisms. The way you talk."
"I wasn't aware there was a virgin way to talk—"
"There's a virgin way to do anything, sweetheart."
Zeno swallowed heavily.
"…Why don't you work on getting yourself undressed instead?" He murmured.
It was a stupid question. Gideon had already discarded that ridiculous snakeskin overcoat and unclicked the first couple clasps of his tank top (?—whatever the hell you wanted to call it. Whatever. Zeno didn't spend much time educating himself on the doctors eccentric fashion sense), revealing a vast expanse of near-silvery pale skin, crested near his shoulders and forearms in what the younger man now recognized as scales.
There wasn't really much else he needed to take off to do whatever Zeno was imagining, not unless he planned to get completely naked. There was more than enough space to- to unbuckle that stupidly decorated leather belt and…
Whatever.
The truth was simply that Zeno didn't know how to handle it. He wasn't a lover, okay? He was an entrepreneur and that was it. He completed whatever purpose set out for him and left. He had not kissed anyone. The last time anyone saw him naked was when he was a child, fresh out of the artificial womb Umbrella had so graciously birthed him from, forget about any kind of intercourse, because sex was…strange. Weird.
Unnatural. Unnatural for him, anyways. Against his will, Zeno felt a primitive scowl growing on his face. Of course it was unnatural for him; it, which was arguably one of the most human desire in existence.
The lab baby wouldn't know how to love if someone smashed him over the head with it.
A deep, dark sort of jealousy burned in his belly because why the hell did Victor Gideon of all people have the ability to love? Not just to love, but to love so easily, so deeply. He came onto the younger man like this was just a day in his life and he'd go on to do it all again come next morning, while Zeno stood trembling in the corner like a terrified animal.
In his endless, useless wave of thinking, Zeno didn't notice the older man approaching one more, nor did he the way his fingers had fallen away from his clothing and now hung still at his sides, clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists that shook ever so slightly with excertion.
"…Zeno."
The younger man jumped.
"I- it's fine, I'm fine."
Victor tilted his head, eyes curious and surprisingly concerned. Zeno cursed him. He was anything but knowledgeable about sex and even he knew that Gideon needed to learn how to take his opportunity to fuck and leave it at that.
"Are you—"
"Why don't you just stop being stupid about this and get your dick out?" He snapped, "I thought you were supposed to be, in your own words, 'good at this these things.'"
A long, uncomfortable silence stretched out between the two men, and Zeno wanted nothing more than for Gideon to either give up his senseless, gentlemanly act and sex him out like he so clearly wanted to, or run out of patience and kick him out of his humble abode.
He nearly jumped when he felt two cool, huge fingers trail down his neck, just barely brushing the porcelain skin and twisted black flesh, as if he were afraid the dark stains of infection were contagious.
Zeno refused to meet him halfway, but it was nearly impossible to keep his eyes trained on the floor, because Victor was everything. He towered over the younger man, a vast expanse of silvery pale skin, dark lightning bolts of scar tissue, and piercing eyes that made up Zeno's entire sky, trailing far below, stretching in all directions as he moved forward, a singular, unstoppable force, and boxed the younger man in against the armchair.
Zeno swallowed, shaking against his will.
"….What do you from me, Gideon?"
The doctor had to lean down in a near-ninety degree angle to look the younger man directly in the eyes.
"I want to know what's wrong with you."
Zeno scoffed, pressed tight against the chair, like a mouse trying to squirm away underground.
"Then you're an insanely sadistic man."
Victor shrugged, smiling.
"I'm a doctor. I'd be horrible at my job if not for my curiosity." He lilted, but then frowned. "But in all seriousness, do you- do you not want this?"
Zeno's head whipped up. He had never heard Victor stutter before, and if it was anything, it was unnatural on him, like he had become merely a poor impersonation of the self-assured man Zeno knew him to be.
"I…"
"You can leave if you like—"
"No." Zeno said instantly.
He wasn't sure what he wanted— scratch that, he had no fucking clue what he wanted. Zeno couldn't tell if he wanted to just sit alone and have a moment to collect himself back into the poised, mature man he knew he was, or to leap on the older man and go wild, but he knew for certain that if he just slipped out that door and found himself locked in his bedroom at the duplex, he would never forgive himself.
"Then…?"
"Do it." He ordered, wrapping one hand around Gideon's wrist and brushing against his silver jewelry.
Victor tilted his head, concerned.
"Are you sure?"
"I….I don't know how to do this. But I want to." He swallowed. "Show me how."
After pausing for a moment, Gideon silently led him back to the couch they were supposed to have shared breakfast and pushed him into a sitting position.
Obedience was a second language to Zeno, especially in the presence of a man like Victor. Perhaps that was why this felt so utterly natural.
"What are you…?"
"Just watch."
Gideon sunk to his knees in front of Zeno in one smooth, quick motion, more graceful than anything he'd ever expected from the doctor.
He was a massive man, and even crouched, he was nearly tall enough to look Zeno in the eyes. It was intoxicating— the knowledge that he sunk lower, forced himself to lean down just a little more, diminished himself all for Zeno and, as he liked to think, only for Zeno.
Experimentally, he ran a hand through Gideon's long, silvery hair, testing the softness.
It felt pleasant between his fingers. Like a cool, running stream of water.
"I'm assuming you've done this for yourself before, hm?" He inquired softly, palming the rapidly growing bulge between Zeno's legs gently. The younger man inhaled sharply.
"…Yes. A couple times."
"Good." Gideon murmured, giggling softly. "I don't care if I have to teach you how to suck a dick, but I don't want to have to give you a lesson on what comes out of what."
"Y- yeah…" Zeno said, trailing off as the older man kneaded him.
"Good." Gideon murmured, giggling softly. "I don't care if I have to teach you how to suck a dick, but I don't want to have to give you a lesson on what comes out of what."
"Y- yeah…" Zeno said, trailing off as the older man kneaded him.
He massaged Zeno's clothed, straining dick firmly with a practiced ease that forced a myriad of soft, embarrassing noises out of his lover.
"How often?"
"Wha- what?" He breathed shakily.
"How often, Zeno?"
God. "Not much, I- I'm too busy for…this most of the time."
Gideon giggled. "Aw. That's a tragedy. We just have to fix that."
He leaned in and licked one long, wide stripe from base to tip, and Zeno keened.
"Ffuckkk…"
"Feels nice, doesn't it? It's a shame you've been missing out all this time."
"Fuck…" He groaned, leaning back as that ridiculous forked tongue teased his slit.
He licked across the shaft a couple more times before leaning up, one hand squeezing Zeno's thigh gently, and wrapping his lips around the flushed, rosy head.
Goddamit, Zeno had always known Victor was anything but inexperienced, if his smooth tone and ease of coming on was anything to go off of, but he sucked like it was his personal profession.
His hot, soft throat wrapped around the younger man's dick, at least a hundred times better than anything he'd done for himself. Zeno would be a filthy liar (though, to be completely honest, he would probably be filthy in any context right now) if he said he'd never dabbled in pornography, but he'd also never truly understood it. Not enough, anyways. He knew it felt good— that's why he and every other lowlife degenrate touched themselves, but it wasn't…great. Not to the point where it was anything more than a simple one-and-done procedure that invariably ended with him washing his hands and spending the next half an hour or more, if he was particularly unlucky, wondering what the hell was wrong with him, before he was sucked back into work.
It was stupid— that's what he'd always thought— in the same boat as drinking and smoking and snorting crack. Something that'd make him feel like the biggest man on the planet for a set period of time, then beat him right back down to his rightful place in the food chain as soon as the high wore off, and it was these stupid, simple pleasures that Zeno had always been woefully inclined to, as much as he tried to fight it.
He shouldn't smoke, not because it was bad for him (it would take far more than a little nicotine to damage his genetically enhanced and virally perfected lungs), but because it was shameful. Too low, something he never really should've been poking his nose into in the first place, and yet, he always found himself making sure he had a fresh pack at the ready for every trip longer than a couple of days. It was the same with sex, just that, of course, he never had to make sure his left hand was in stock.
That's what he'd always imagined, anyways.
"Mgh." He moaned softly as Victor worked him, his throat massaging him and tongue pressed flat against the hot, throbbing organ like a thousand different hands at once. "Where— where the hell did you learn how to suck cock?"
Gideon looked up at him, wearing the same faint, shit-eating grin present even through his duties.
Jesus.
What a sight. The all-powerful, groundbreaking geneticist Victor Gideon, sprawled shirtless on his knees with a mouthful of dick.
He released the younger man with a soft, wanton pop and caught the flushed organ in one hand.
"Adults get around sometimes, Zeno, I thought you knew that." He lilted teasingly.
Zeno scowled, fighting back the red rising to his already glowing cheeks.
"Shut up. You know what I mean."
Victor's eyes gleamed dangerously in the dim, warm office light as he returned to his task at hand.
Same with his teeth, like little pieces of golden jewlery in the soft, orange luster, his pale skin like a platinum ocean expanding beneath the other man, and all those medically impractical hand accessories, and suddenly, Zeno found himself utterly mesmerized by the doctor.
He sat before Zeno posed like a dog before its master, in a position of utter, complete worship.
He touched the younger man as if he would break at even the slightest amount of pressure, hands gripping his thighs and hips with all the reverence of a scientist beholding the tiniest, rarest, most beautiful specimen, careful not to crush its delicate body between his finely decorated fingertips, and looked up at Zeno through hooded, hazy eyes, like getting down for his so-called partner in crime was better than any drink or powder he'd ever tasted.
Zeno could feel his own face softening with the unending pleasure and relaxation Victor was so intent on presenting. His inhibitions were slowly but surely stripped by those two huge, cool hands, delivering him from an otherwise burning hellscape, smashing down his titanium walls with a singular, well-placed squeeze.
"You're…it's…" Mindless words slipped out of Zeno's mouth, escaping all the barriers and checkpoints he usually had for these things, and he silently cursed himself for falling to a simple suck-and-fuck so easily.
Gideon looked up at him curiously.
"Nevermind. K- keep going." He murmured, although there was really no purpose in telling the older man to do so. It wasn't as if he'd given any signs of stopping soon, but Zeno figured he'd needed something to fill the relatively awkward pause.
Zeno damned himself for his inexperience. He couldn't help the short, embarrassingly-high pitched whines and grunts that escaped him every time his…his lover did something particularly intense, hiccups in an otherwise well-poised man and adding an explicit seasoning to the already lewd sounds of whatever the hell the older man was doing with his mouth.
Gideon would tongue him, and he would moan.
He'd stroke his inner thigh, and Zeno would lean into it helplessly.
A deep-seeded, disgusted part of him cried out that this was an outrage and that in no world should Zeno be this fucking whiny, and even less should he be doing it for a man like that.
He wasn't even 100% certain what he was feeling— Zeno figured he'd never been taught the words. For all his masterfully engineered intelligence, he'd been forced to learn much of his current knowledge himself at a humiliating age. Umbrella never bothered with the unnecessary, and teaching a baby whose only worth was in its genome things like the Russian Revolution and protons were far from useful.
It'd taken him months just to get up to date with your basic American highschooler, an A-grade brain granting him impressive learning ability, but still. That didn't make learning about variables as a nineteen-year old any less humiliating.
Victor worked him tirelessly, and against himself, Zeno rolled a couple strands of silvery hair between his still-gloved fingertips. He wondered how smart the doctor was. Incredibly, obviously, but still. There was more to smarts than physics and biology, although those certainly helped.
A bolt of resentment shot through him. Victor was smart, and he understood things Zeno would never have a chance at.
Things like how to sleep with another organism without freezing up like a dead fish, or how to connect with his coworkers. How to be so inherently, totally, entirely confident in himself, as the doctor so clearly was.
How to be a man, he supposed, which was odd because if DNA was anything to go off of, he was one-hundred times more human than Victor had been in years.
Zeno looked away, his eyes stinging and praying to a God he most definitely did not believe in that Gideon didn't notice. He would be left with no choice but to shoot himself point-blank if he cried during a fucking blowjob.
Despite all his silent begging, the older man popped off his cock and wiped his mouth with one hand and stood up, instantly the same the towering, all-powerful presence Zeno had momentarily forgotten he was once again.
Even in the soft, idealistic lighting, Victor could never have passed for human. He was simply too tall, too big, too monstrous, his skin like an unending, ivory sea, fragmented by still-developing, serpentine scales forming in sporadic bursts, eyes shining from so far above like pools of dark, delicious wine, utterly intoxicating, and Zeno found himself weak.
Victor could've killed him right then, he was certain. Even through all the horrors Umbrella had inflicting in creating him, the perfect, indestructible anti-christ for a deeply flawed God, he knew his body wouldn't have fought back had the older man decided he was sick of Zeno's ridiculous emotional galavanting and torn him to pieces.
His glasses finally slipped off his nose, rattled by the sudden movement, and fell onto his clothed chest with a soft, near-imperceptible thump.
"You worry me, Zeno."
He shrugged weakly.
"You're a doctor. It's your job to worry."
"Stop that talk." He snapped, though it held no real bite. "Are you…high?"
Zeno scoffed, "You know I can't really get high."
The virus had taken away his precious ability to lose himself in the throes of whatever substance he got his hands on (which— as a rich man, was admittedly very many) long ago. He was certain it was the same for Gideon, perhaps even more so due to the intensive progression of his disease, although he'd never been particularly interested in the stuff in the first place.
Gideon shrugged.
"You're acting like it, my friend." He said softly, and sat down on the leather cushion next to him. The massive dip pulled him towards the doctor slightly, and Zeno fought it like his life depended on it. "What's wrong with you? I've never seen a sickness like this."
Tch. Of course. A new specimen is always a fun specimen. Zeno wondered vaguely how long it would take Victor to fully inspect him, poking around, pulling out all his nastiest, most vile pieces to observe and document, before he realized there was nothing really to play with and ultimately lost interest.
Dissection is no fun when there's nothing to dissect, he thought bitterly.
"Well perhaps then," He hissed dangerously, " You should not have invited a sick man to your bed."
"I didn't say it was necessarily bad—"
"Yes, it is! Don't even try to fuck with me like this."
A beat of silence. Zeno stayed still for a moment, then another, and another. He could've sat on that stupid, expensive couch for hours, still exposed like a grotesque, helpless animal, all the while Gideon sat beside him, as cold and unmoving as a crocodile directly beneath the water's surface.
He wondered when he was going to strike.
Eventually, Zeno sighed defeatedly. He figured he'd long-since lost today's battle. It was better to go down graciously than to spiral to the ground in a fiery explosion.
"…It’s…it's humiliating being a virgin at my age, you know.” He began.
Gideon quirked a brow, frowning.
"That's what this whole fiasco is about…? People get into their thirties before they have sex. Some die alone. It’s really not all that important—“
“No, you don’t understand. It’s- it’s not about sex and having a wife or a family or anything. It’s…hm." He searched for the words desperately. "I forget. When did you join Umbrella?"
A flash of that same forked tongue told him the doctor was contemplating his question. It was a quirk of his Zeno found himself noting far more intensively than he would've preferred.
"1998, I believe. They had already been planning the nemesis projects for years by then, but they'd just had an abnormally large layoff of scientists and desperately needed more." He paused, then smiled. "I wonder what happened."
"I was born in 1997."
"How young."
"I know." Zeno murmured bitterly. "Do you have any idea what it was like living in that facility?"
"I assume you're going to tell me it was horrific?" He asked, reptilian eyes gleaming curiously.
Zeno sighed. Oh, mister doctor. He didn't know how anyone could possibly be so entirely oblivious and so seemingly omniscient at the same time. He supposed it was just Victor's way of doing things.
"…I suppose. It was not pleasant, I can say. I'm not sure why they ever let me out. It doesn't make any sense to you, does it? Tell me. You're the professional."
Gideon tilted his head.
"I suppose not. Usually, when you raise an animal in captivity, you have to keep it in captivity." He recounted, a piece of information surely straight from a textbook. "It'll have no means of surviving in the wild; no hunting techniques, no learned predatory awareness." He paused. "Humans are very far removed from animals however, my friend."
"But we are still animals." He murmured.
"What was that?"
"I don't think I'm capable of surviving in the real world, Victor."
The older man stopped, the same confused look Zeno had become so well-aquainted with as of late crossing his round, pale features.
"…What do you mean? You're nearly indestructible."
"It doesn't matter if I'm indestructible. So was T-00. And Nemesis. And Ivan. And every other ridiculous fucking beast Umbrella has synthesized for cash. God, Victor, when are you going to learn? It doesn't matter. It doesn't count for anything if I could survive decades without food or water or any of that nonsense if I don't know how to. I…I don't know how to be like this, and I can't think of another way to tell you. I don't understand intimacy, I don't understand passion, and I don't understand you. I don't get any of this." He hissed, "I am a twenty-nine year old man and I have never been close to anyone in particular, nor have I had any ambitions beyond 'spit out more dollar bills,' nor did I succeed at my one and only purpose for our all-important Doctor Wesker. Is that what you want to hear? There's your specimen. I know, I'm extra interesting. That's why I was selected for this." He laughed to himself. "That's why I do any of this. Because it's my purpose, and what the fuck else am I going to do? I'll tell you what I'm not going to do, and it's exist as a normal goddamn human being. I will never have a childhood friend. I will never have a mother, a father, or a sibling. I will never lose myself at a party, or enjoy a warm meal after a long period of hunger, or take a well-deserved nap after nights of tireless work, because there is no nap, or hunger, or drunken fun for me. Not now, not then, and now ever."
He stopped for a moment, taking a sharp inhale. Fuck this. He should've gone home while he still could.
"But you don't get it. Of course you don't get it, doctor, because how could you? You chose your inhumanity. You tasted what it was like to live and you decided it wasn't for you, you fucking monster." He scoffed. "Do you feel bad for all the things you've done? Everyone you've hurt? You're a geneticist, you make creatures like me. Does it feel nice?— Give you a high every time you're successful, knowing you're responsible for this sort of unholy conception? Let you feel like the big, strong man who took the dog by the leash and went against everything nature demanded? Did it make you the new God?"
A long, uncomfortable silence stretched out between them. Zeno rubbed his temple. Jesus.
"You seem the type."
He desperately needed out. Out of this ridiculous, over-heated office and its temperature and ideal humdiity fit for a fucking snake. Out of this overdone hellhole named Rhodes Care Facility. Out of this ludicrous joke he called a life. Zeno would blow his brains out if he could, but knowledge thar the virus would merely knit the scattered pieces back together time and time again until he grew sick of trying curbed him.
"I…"
"Please. Just save it Gideon." Zeno grunted, running his hands through his thoroughly messed-up hair. "I know you hate me. And I hate you. I'm sorry I had you suck me off, it was a ridiculous mistake. Why don't you phone the Connections and have them set us up with different partners so—"
"No."
Zeno stopped, taken aback.
What…?
For a moment, he figured the reason the doctor wasn't going to arrange a better fit mix was clearly because he didn't want Zeno in the mix at all, and there was no better way to achieve that than to kill him.
But then again, that wasn't the reason. Of course it wasn't. The virus had rendered him immune to death's sweet kiss, as he'd just poured his guts out about just a couple of moments earlier. Gideon would have to do something much more intensive if he wanted to eliminate him from the Connections entirely.
Perhaps he would trap him. Lock the younger man in a heavy metal cage he couldn't even stand up in and sew his mouth shut to prevent his senseless yammering. Victor was certainly capable of it.
Or maybe he'd put him in cryo-sleep. Could he do that? He was never entirely sure of where his extensive funding went, but judging by all the increasingly insane experiments Victor excitedly told him about, he supposed it was within the realm of possibility.
Or maybe he'd take a more efficient approach and lock him in the abandoned lab Umbrella had left not far away, giving him away to the insanity of an all-white, never-ending labyrinth so he could spend the rest of his torturously long life wandering aimlessly and thinking about what he did.
"I…I apologize." Oh. Zeno looked up instantly. That certainly wasn't what he had been expecting. "For everything that's been done to you. I suppose all too often science's ramifications are ignored in favor of progression."
"It's not- not okay, and they always are…" Zeno asserted, although he wasn't quite sure where to go with it. He never expected Gideon to just- just agree with him. It didn't make any sense. "I despise Umbrella."
"I'm aware. It's not a good company. I worked for Spencer, as I'm sure you heard, but I've always known it was unethical." He paused, then sighed. "And so am I. I…I will admit, Zeno, that though I never had anything to do with you, there's…" A beat of silence, as if he were searching for the words. Zeno was dumbfounded. Gideon never had to search for words, they were just there for him, and he knew what to do with them instantly. Not knowing what to say was supposed to be a trait exclusive to the younger man. "I'm sorry. I didn't know these things were so harmful."
"Because we weren't really human, were we?" He asked bitterly. "Just lab rats, so it's not as if anything that happens to us really matters."
Victor was silent, looking away with an expression of shame blanketing his face that Zeno could never have even imagined. He scowled internally.
Stupid fucking doctor. Why couldn't he have just fought back like a normal man? Instinctively, he knew it was because Gideon was quite literally anything but a normal man, but still. It irked him, because now where the hell was he supposed to go?
Zeno knew how to fight— he was quite good at that, actually. Although he was never particularly impassioned by it, his well-enhanced bodily structures granted him speed and power no man could hope to match.
His train of thought slowed for a moment. No man but Victor, that is.
Regardless, the point was that battle was one of the few things he did know, and know so intimitally, too. He could've debated with the doctor for hours, and then, if that didn't work, he would've had no qualms with tearing into that alabaster hide either.
This part was new, though, and he had no idea how to handle it.
Zeno gazed at him. It was only very rarely that he was the one staring down a discomforted Gideon rather than vice versa.
"You are…" Zeno began tentatively.
In reality, he had no fucking clue what the doctor was. He knew what he was in parts, he supposed, but the ultimate sum was something Zeno had no hope of comprehending. It was too complicated. Too large. Too much of this and too much of that and too much a mismatched amalgamation his brain just couldn't properly connect.
He was evil, he knew that much. Silently looking over Gideon's dark, hooded eyes and slightly parted lips, he wondered how. The man had deceptively benevolent features. Soft, rounded, more like a gentleman than the maniacal beast he'd understood Gideon to be. Nothing like Spencer, whom he'd known was malicious from the moment he laid eyes on him.
Zeno's gaze narrowed bitterly. Of course he looked kind. Such was the nature of snakes, to be deceitful.
But if he was evil, why didn't he treat Zeno with said evilness? It baffled him. The entire care-center was chalk-full of poor bastards onto which he'd enacted his wickedness, but never once had he laid a harming hand on Zeno.
A hand.
If he was evil, why did he touch the younger man like that? Snakes aren't supposed to wait around. He should've gone for the throat the moment he got close, finished him quickly, maybe played around a little, if he was particularly nasty, but the ending should have always been the same— death.
Obviously, not death in the practical sense. Zeno had thought more than enough about his pestering immortality today. But something hypothetical, perhaps emotional. A death that actually mattered.
His still bare skin still tingled where the older man had touched him, crying out for more against his now tightly-shut, stone-cold defenses, clawing at his hypodermis and begging to be let out. Primitive. Irrational. Ignited.
Zeno swallowed. Perhaps Victor had wounded him, in a way.
"…strange." He finally finished. Strange. What a stupid way to describe the ugly, writhing mass of emotions he struggled to push back into the recesses of his mindscape, but until they invented new words, strange would have to do. "I don't understand you at all."
Gideon peered back at him, his eyes huge, bottomless pits.
"I suppose that makes our feelings mutual."
Against his better judgement, Zeno found himself relaxing a tad into the leather cushions and subsequently into Victor's dip.
"But…I would enjoy learning."
The younger man twitched.
"What did you say…?"
"Like you mentioned, I am a doctor. It is in my nature to be curious," He murmured quietly. Zeno didn't miss the way he learned towards the other slightly, just enough to bring them an inch or two closer together. "Teach me." One huge hand edging closer to his own weak, twitching fingers. "I want to understand."
Victor Gideon was quite possibly one of the weirdest creatures he had ever come across, which was saying a lot for someone raised in an Umbrella facility. He was slowly coming to realize that he would have to point a loaded gun in his face to get him to properly fuck off.
"You greedy fuck." He chided softly, "You always want more, don't you? More money, a bigger dose, a more ambitious project."
He didn't fight the older man as he slid closer and wrapped his other arm around Zeno, trapping him in a tight, all-encompassing embrace.
"All that schooling and diplomas and no one ever taught you that old sayings? Something about a cat and…interest…I forget it." Zeno mumbled offhandedly. He had never been all that versed in pop culture. "Dig too deep and you might find something you'll regret."
Gideon tilted his head.
"I don't think that's possible."
"Hm."
Zeno could've suffocated right there— he would've very much liked to, actually, wrapped in the billowing expanse of Gideon's flesh and blood. The doctor pulled him closer and Zeno let him, instead too exhausted and too sick even hope for resistance.
Zeno's head rested delicately against the side of the other man's torso. It was deceptively soft and cool, like a well-used pillow.
He buried his face, lost.
None of it made sense. None of it. Very little was actually clear for Zeno in the cold, alien landscape named love, and Victor was one of the biggest anomalies he'd ever come across.
He'd always been intrigued, at least a tad. It was in his nature— being genetically identical to a globally-renounced (and, nowadays, globally-feared) virologist had been guaranteed to pass some of Wesker's interests down, but it was certainly much less intense, more like a watered-down, summarized version of the fiery, unstoppable passions Wesker had held.
The doctor was vile, of course, one-hundred percent, but he was also the closest thing to perfection Zeno had laid eyes on. The same cavernous, starving sense of longing he'd spent so many years getting used to bubbled back up to the surface.
Gideon had not been conventionally attractive even before his inoculation. He was middle-aged and rapidly crossing into the senior sphere. His eyebrows and what he assumed, from the near-silken feeling of the older man's skin against his, the rest of his body hair had long since shriveled and fallen off as his disease made way for something greater.
Cracks had formed in sporadic bursts across his entire body, some areas still little more than odd curves and pits in the skin, others smoothed, fully formed, black-tipped scales, bizarre enough that distantly Zeno wondered what his end game was going to look like.
His eyes were dark, overpowering, his hair in a messy, mane-like tussle.
He towered over any and everyone around him and Zeno found himself inexplicably drawn to the beast named Victor Gideon.
Perhaps it was a biological remnant, he mused. Wesker had been profoundly obsessed with Ouroboros, and now, trapped in a body that was nothing like its rightful owner, that passion had to go somewhere.
"…Okay." He murmured into the older man's skin.
Zeno had no clue how he was supposed to…teach Gideon these things. He figured it was because some things just weren't teachable, because, at the very least, they had to be comprehensible, and whatever the hell Zeno had writhing inside him was anything but that. But then again, if anyone could understand this mess, it had to be the doctor.
Gideon leaned back a little and peered down at Zeno, seemingly satisfied for what had to be the first time today.
"You have my utmost attention."
Zeno swallowed. Where to go from here? He was at a total loss, so he figured he may as well start aimlessly. It certainly wouldn't be a deviation.
"It's just…" He struggled for the right word. "Unnatural, for me, I suppose. It just isn't right."
"Intimacy is a normal part of any person's life, my friend. I don't believe that's possible, either."
Zeno sighed.
"But, then again, I am not a normal person, am I?"
"…You could be."
A beat of silence. Zeno refused to meet the older man's gaze, even as he felt it sweep over the top of his head curiously. It was simply too much. He'd heard him clearly— of course he did, he could pick up on a fucking mouse's heartbeat, forget about hushed words from the chest of the man he was literally laying on.
"This level of delusion isn't normal even from you, Victor. You should see someone."
"There's no need to be like that. Just…I know nothing can change the past, and I'm…sorry. But, I am a firm believer that anything conditioned in can subsequently be conditioned out."
"…Hm."
"You don't have to stay like this, you know."
Something evil and sharp pricked at the corner of Zeno's eyes, and he buried himself deeper in the other man's side. It was nice there. Soft. Cool. Like he'd burrowed underground and was now somehow safe from all the world's vicious qualms, even further insulated by the comforting weight of Victor's arm around his shoulders.
"But I do." He mumbled.
"I wonder who tells you these things, sweetheart."
"Don't—" The hiss shot out of his mouth on principle, but internally Zeno sobbed as the prickling in his eyes grew tenfold.
He despised it. Zeno did not cry.
He didn't cry, because crying is ridiculous and doesn't solve anything. It only made things worse. Memories marched on through his mind, flattening the delicate curves and turns of his grey matter. Crying is useless, remember? Crying made men in white lab coats emerge before you even knew it and do things to you that you wouldn't recall come morning, and then suddenly, you wouldn't want to cry again.
You would never want to cry again.
Oh, God….
"Oh, God…"
He hadn't even noticed the wetness that'd gathered and spilled from his eyes, falling from his own body to Gideon's in one long, burning track, but he certainly noticed the way the older man pulled him into his lap and cradled the back of his head.
For all his sharp-tonguedness and mastery of sex, Victor was a surprisingly silent comforter. Not a word escaped him as he held the younger man, simply rocking him back and forth slowly, as if Zeno were a fragile, uncontrollable newborn and Gideon the inexperienced father, although it wasn't as if he really had it in him to care.
Victor was huge, and disgustingly kind. He cut the leash on a rampant sort of warmth blooming deep inside Zeno with a single, firm embrace.
There was no way of telling how long he spent like that, curled helplessly in the arms of another man. Zeno had simply shut his eyes and, for all he knew, he could've stayed there for hours. He could've fallen asleep. He could've died.
God's angels did typically take odd forms.
It was only when Victor gently pulled away that Zeno snapped back to reality.
"Do you…?" He ventured cautiously, his hand slipping from his shoulder to his waist.
Zeno peered up at him helplessly. What a useless question. The heat in his belly from earlier this morning did not hesitate to spring back from its fleeting hibernation.
"Yes," He breathed heavily, and pushed off of the older man until he was sitting upright. His skin buzzed with an odd, tingling sensation, not unlike a miniscule dose of electro-therapy. "But this time, I- I want to do it."
Gideon raised one smooth brow curiously. "Oh?"
"I want to…serve you…" He murmured abashedly.
"You want to love me?"
Zeno swallowed heavily, slipping from the couch to his knees before the doctor.
"…Yes."
Although he was still mostly-covered, despite everything he'd been doing (somehow), Zeno felt so vulgarly and so unbelievably naked.
"I….I don't know how though."
The older man cocked his head.
"Then it's a good thing I'm here to show you, hm?"
Zeno nodded wordlessly in agreement. Hesitantly, he reached for Victor's trousers, fingers shaking as he picked at that stupidly orante belt. The shiny, well-crafted metal was smooth, almost slick, and painstakingly difficult to unclasp because of it— or, that's what Zeno told himself.
It came undone with a sudden flurry of leather and platinum, the heavy buckle hanging off of Gideon's lap and already tugging down his pants ever-so-slightly. Zeno's eyes burned as he traced the grey-tinted, handsome peek of his exposed hip and cotton waistband of his underwear. Sleek. Opaque. A single harsh, dark crack ran down the side of his pelvis, prompting the younger man to wonder if he could follow that trail with his tongue all the way down to his rightful treasure.
He pulled the Gideon expensive linen slacks down wordlessly, eyes laser-focused on the prize. Come to think of it, perhaps it was a little strange that he'd gotten to third base with Victor and still never saw his cock (because as endearing as it had been, he didn't count the massive bulge Victor got from sucking him off as actually getting aquainted with whatever the hell he had down there).
Gideon delicately lifted his legs to help the other man rid him of his pants and underwear, and Zeno groaned.
Beautiful.
He was fucking beautiful.
A thick, heavy cock rested between Gideon's enormous, pale-skinned thighs, the head already flushed a deep purple and a couple of prominent veins running down the side. The skin of his inner legs was still smooth and unscaled and hot beneath Zeno's fingers.
"God, you're so sexy…" He huffed, squeezing his legs.
"Prove it." The older man hummed, canting his hips towards Zeno.
A soft, weak moan escaped Zeno as he tentatively touched him, as if Victor's flesh itself could burn him. It was hot beneath his fingertips, pliant, but with a certain power that thrummed just beneath the reptilian skin and multiplied the fire in Zeno's belly tenfold.
Gideon was already half-hard and throbbing in his hands, the glans practically ablaze and bearing the wanton shine of the first hint of precum. It looked a tad different than his own— thicker. Almost opalescent in the weak lighting, though Zeno couldn't tell with such a tiny amount. Oh well. He could fix that.
"What- what do I…?"
"Whatever you want." The doctor murmured, smiling and gazing down at Zeno with a certain type of admiration that sent bolts of heat down his spine. "Just play nice."
Hesitantly, Zeno leaned in. The virus had not left Gideon untouched there, either. Although the general shape remained largely the same, the soft, thin skin had taken on a vaguely silvery palor, while small ridges had begun to form on the shaft, increasing in prominence as he got closer to the head.
Unlike the rest of him, it completely lacked the developing scales (which he supposed was to be expected; every animal, feathered, scaley, furred, whatever, had a smooth dick. It was optimal), and instead glistened with perhaps a different type of scale— humans had that too, correct? He could've sworn he'd heard something about terminal versus vellus hairs before— and its own natural slick.
Zeno licked one long, flat stripe down the base experimentally.
Salty. Musky, with a faint metallic tang and a kick that was distinctly Victor. Delicious.
A deep, husky groan came from above him.
"Yesss…just like that, sweetheart."
Ignited by the taste and praise, Zeno went in again, this time pausing at the mushroom-like glans to tease the slit. Oddly-colored pre practically gushed from the older man's cock, leaking out and staining Zeno's cheek like hot oil.
"Ugh, God," He breathed, his other hand coming up to massage his lover's heavy balls. "What is coming out of you?"
Gideon positively crooned.
"Aw, you don't like it? That's a shame. You look so handsome down there." He murmured, smiling, and gently brushed a stray lock of hair out of his face. Zeno burned.
"N- no, it's fine, I like it, I just…I've never seen anything like it." He mumbled.
Victor shrugged, and thrust weakly against Zeno, a silent plea to continue.
"Well, then again, you've never slept with me, have you? You'll get used to it."
"Ngh."
Oh…Lord…Zeno borderline drooled at the implications.
He dove back down towards his trophy and fit the head in his mouth slowly, awkwardly trying to manipulate his teeth away from the sensitive flesh while still somehow fitting his massive cock between his lips.
Victor was fucking huge— of course he was, he must've been at least eight feet tall, it wouldn't have made any sense if his dick wasn't big, too, but Zeno still found it near-impossible to fit the glans in his mouth. He moaned weakly as Gideon's hand slipped around to cup the back of his head, thumbing his messy hair gently.
"Just relax, sweetheart." He mumbled, "These things aren't compatible with lots of tension."
The first three inches slotted in Zeno's inexperienced throat nicely before he found it difficult to take more without choking. His eyes widened as he pulled off, producing a deep, humiliatingly slutty glurkkk, a thin string of salivia connecting his swollen lips to the hot, fat organ in front of him.
Zeno smiled. If he could've sent that image to Zeno from just three hours earlier, he would've choked on his breakfast. Tch. Poor bastard, filling his mouth with boring food instead of this. "Having fun?" Gideon smiled.
"It's- it's hard."
He laughed.
"Of course it's hard. Look at it." He paused. "I'm a nice man, Zeno, I don't expect you to take it all this time." He sighed and leaned back, warm light illuminating his soft torso and thighs in an orange haze. It seemed to transform his dusty pink scar flat across his center into a line of rusty, gold running from neck to navel. The glossy tissue shimmered faintly. "Just make me feel good."
Good…I can do that, Zeno thought hazily, lazily jerking the doctor in long, slow strokes.
He leaned forward and pressed a deep, ravenous kiss to the inside of Gideon's thigh.
The meat there was thick, firm; washed out enough to be nearly platinum and carrying the same, albeit a little less intense version of the delicious taste of his cock.
He sucked a deep, near-purple hickey into the skin and pulled a soft whimper from the older man.
"God, Zeno, you nasty, nasty boy."
"I learned from the best." He mumbled, face still buried.
Zeno continued his worshipful licking and sucking, occasionally slipping to the side to nip at Gideon's thighs and cup the sac between them. A series of delectable moans and gasps followed him.
"That, and your natural talent." Victor breathed out heavily, "If I hadn't been walking you through this right now, I would've thought you do this just as much as me."
"Oh…" Zeno groaned, rubbing the head on the side of his mouth and smearing precum across his cheek. "You whore."
The older man chuckled darkly.
"I guess that makes two of us, sweetheart."
"Mm…"
For all his size and biological oddities, it was anything but burdensome to suck off the doctor. Zeno worked him like a well-oiled machine; in, out, in, out, pressing his tongue flat against the shaft and dragging it up and down, until the whimpers and moans escaping his lover morphed into a loud, uninterrupted string of pure filth, something that gave away Gideon's progress almost immediately.
"But, fuck, Zeno, you- you keep doing that, and I'm going to lose myself."
Zeno smiled around his mouthful before releasing him.
"Already, doctor? I would've thought such a passionate man like you would be able to go for hours."
Gideon scoffed.
"As if we haven't been knee-deep in this for more than an hour."
"An hour of groping, perhaps," Zeno said idly.
The lazy smirk on his face was promptly wiped off with a particularly hard thrust.
"I never would've imagined it took so much to satisfy you, Zeno." The Doctor grit out, grinding against Zeno's face with a desperation he'd yet to see anything like outside of exaggerated pornography.
Victor rutted into his face, each harsh thrust rocking the younger man's head and accompanied by a deep, rich moan. Zeno grabbed onto his thighs for stability and resigned to stay still and let his doctor fuck his mouth as he so clearly wished, until the combined, stupidly explicit noises of Zeno's poor throat and Gideon's desperation morphed into a single cacophy of filth.
For all his size and evident devotion, it didn't take long for the older man to reach his climax. Victor finished with a loud, deep, almost overwhelmingly slutty moan, his huge fingers tightening in Zeno's hair and pushing him down further on the impossibly huge organ until the he choked.
"Ah—"
"Come- come on, sweetheart, I know you can take it," He breathed heavily, hand curling gently but firmly in a way that gave Zeno no escape.
His eyes stung as he struggled to take what Victor gave him and what had to have been at least a pint of thick, opalescent cum shot out of his dick. The taste rocketed across Zeno's tongue, slammed into the back of his throat until he dutifully swallowed it.
They rested there for a couple of minutes until Gideon slowly but surely began to soften against his tongue. The doctor's harsh grip eased into a kind, dare Zeno say loving hand in his hair, twirling the short, platinum blonde strands idly.
"Are you proud of yourself?" Victor purred after a long stretch of silence save for their heavy breathing. "You should be."
"Mmf—" Zeno pulled off of him, cheeks flushed a soft pink with an unexplainable warmth the praise shot into him. "Thank you."
He kneeled for a moment longer, collecting himself before he stumbled back to his feet and flopped next to Gideon. He was more disheveled than he was certain he'd ever been. Zeno's black dress shirt was thoroughly crinkled and half-pulled open behind his messy waistcoat, exposing his flushed chest. Sweat clung to his skin, painting him with a faint, damp sheen, his normallp impeccably groomed hair utterly wrecked, faint traces of precum and whatever other bodily fluids he'd gotten involved in tangled in his strands and pupils blown wide and hazy.
Victor gently pulled him into his lap and being so thoroughly and well defeated, Zeno let him.
"…it's a long drive back to the condos." Gideon murmured after a long stretch of contented silence.
"Mhm."
"Surely that's going to be irritating?"
"I guess," Zeno burbled softly, more exhausted than anything. The absolutely last thing on his mind right now was that stupid fucking trip and his empty, godforsaken bedroom.
"So…?"
The younger man sighed, just a tinge annoyed, though his heart wasn't in it. It didn't really matter, did it? For someone like him, there were only a couple of things in the world he couldn't just tell his clients to hold off for another couple of hours.
"One night. I can stay one night."
Victor smiled softly.
"That's what I thought."